


Self Defense

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Demonstuck [57]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Demonstuck, Gen, Prompt: Human Shield, Promptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 12:31:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20892164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: You're not exactly taking this well. You never take murder well. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does it count as murder if it's in self-defense?D tries to get Gale to talk about a hunt that went wrong.





	Self Defense

"You got shot, Gale," D says, way too calm to be saying that. You're pretty sure that the tone's a direct reaction to the way you can't keep your hands still, how you're twisting the hem of your shirt up and tugging on it hard enough that sooner or later the fabric is going to tear. The fact that you haven't looked him in the eyes once since you woke up probably has something to do with it too, though. 

You're not exactly taking this well. You never take murder well. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does it count as murder if it's in self-defense? 

**Doesn't count as murder when he pulled the trigger.** Kurloz huffs as you jump, hands coming down on your shoulders even though you know there wasn't anything but empty space between the chair you're in and the kitchen sink a moment ago. He shushes you when you flinch, taking his hands away and waiting until you settle enough to not pull away to put them back. **A Balancekeeper couldn't find you at fault here, lil' sib.**

The thought of someone calling in a Balancekeeper doesn't help at all. You could have done better and they'll know it, you should have—

"Fuck off, Kurloz," Karkat growls from the doorway. 

"He's trying to help." D sighs and finally settles into one of the other chairs, propping his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. You manage maybe a second's worth of eye contact before you can't take anymore; it's enough to confirm that there's absolutely no anger on his face. "Look, you were the one who got shot—" 

"So d-did he." Why did you have to point that out? You could have kept your mouth shut. 

"Yeah, well. He had the gun." 

**Motherfucker didn't shoot himself.**

"Not helping, Kurloz. Gale, I know you don't wanna talk about it—" 

But they need to know. They need to have at least some idea of what you did so they can explain why you killed a hunter. 

(Another hunter. Again. _Again._) 

**HDB don't count as hunters,** Kurloz points out, letting go of your shoulders in favor of pulling another chair around so he can sit down backwards in it, head tilting as he watches you for a second before a few of his long white dreadlocks twine around the legs of your chair. Yes, you freeze as he pulls you to face him. You can't help it. **Let me help you.**

"I, uh—I don't—" Then his eyes light up for a brief second, bright violet flaring deep in the pupils, and you understand. "That's—I, uh, that's, I don't—" 

You don't know if you can just let him into your head like he wants you to. Not with the magic you worked a couple hours ago...what if you hurt him while he's trying to access your memories? What if— 

**Cute.** The demon's scarred mouth twitches up in his version of a wry grin. **You're a couple centuries too young to pull that shit off, lil' sib.**

"You, um. You don't know that, what if—" 

**Let me worry about my own hide. Can I?**

You shouldn't give in this easily. But...you _can't_ tell them what happened any other way. All your magic won't let you get more than a couple words in without dissolving into either incoherent stammering or tears. 

"...uh. Yeah." 

Kurloz nods and reaches up to brush dark tattooed fingers against your temples. You know he doesn't need contact to do this; it's a way of letting you know what's coming, a small piece of advance warning. 

You close your eyes and try to remember to breathe. 

_He was a hunter and you shouldn't have been on the hunt in the first place but sometimes you're good at finding things. People. People are easier than things, people want to be found,_ kids _want to be found and this was a kid who would have wanted to be found if she wasn't asleep, just a little kid, a little not-quite-human kid and how could he even think of—_

**Little bit further.**

Your memory skips like one of Grey's records. 

_"Keep your hands up," he says, and you keep your hands up but you close them into fists. "Get out of the way," he says, and you don't know why he doesn't just shoot you first._

**Didn't want your blood on the body. Or the motherfucker planned on doing you with a different weapon, make it look like self defense. Depends on whether he planned on keeping the gun he shot her with—fuck. Come on, don't do that—**

Kurloz's hands tighten a little on your face, and you feel his dreads come up to coil around your hands like that'll keep you from withdrawing further into your own mind. It does, at least a little—you still want to get away from the thoughts of what you did, what he was going to do, but you can hold yourself steady, hold yourself in check— 

**We're stopping.**

"No." It's one word and you still can't believe you get it out without hesitation. "Please." 

**...**

"Gale?" D asks, and you shake your head as much as you can with Kurloz's hands holding you in place. 

**...alright. I got you.**

When the memory starts back up, it's hazier, tinted like you're looking at it through someone else's eyes, a little less immediate. 

_"Move," he told you. "_Move!_" and it was a growl, there was so much fury and hate in that one word, familiar from so many other times but you'd rather have it aimed at you than at someone who couldn't defend herself so you clenched your fists tighter and you kept struggling to weave your magic into a barrier between yourself and the hunter whose name you didn't know. And you knew that you couldn't make it strong enough, not without moving your hands—the best you could do is redirect a bullet, and you couldn't even do_ that _without energy to redirect—_

**Motherfucking messiahs. You knew what you were doing.**

_—of course you knew, of course you knew, you're a shit hunter but you understand your magic better than you could ever understand anything else in the world and you realized almost immediately that you were going to die. He was going to shoot you and you were going to die because you refused to let him kill a kid you didn't even know and that was as it should be but—_

_But you—_

**_Enough._**

The coil of dreadlocks around your hands tighten, shifting for a moment to something harder, closer to the bone they share their color with, and you open your eyes without meaning to. No—Kurloz is the one in control for a moment, you see the purple glow in his eyes for a second before it fades again; he opens your eyes for you. 

"But—I—" 

**That's enough.** The demon shakes his head and moves his hand to ruffle your hair up, huffing in what sounds almost like offense when you automatically duck. **Motherfucker tried to shoot the cub, you did some shit and shot him right back.**

"That's, uh—that's not—I didn't—" 

"Is it close enough?" D asks from across the table. How does he keep his voice so _gentle_, when the topic at hand is what you did? "He was gonna kill her?" 

"I—I couldn't let him—" You could have done better. You could have realized sooner. You could have not killed him. 

**Lil' sib, you nearly got yourself killed trying not to kill him.**

"Leave them alone about that." D leans across the table and smacks Kurloz over the head, and not as gently as he would one of the kids, either. "They're not a fuckin' hunter, _or_ a demon. They're just a kid." 

"I—uh, I'm not—" You're over eighteen. You're not a kid, you know legally you're capable of facing your own consequences—the look that D's giving you is so exasperated that you completely lose that train of thought. 

**Baby mage with too motherfucking much in their head.** Kurloz shakes his head again, then meets your eyes. You wish he wasn't doing that. **I can let you forget.**

"But I—" 

**You didn't kill him. Call it suicide.**

"Take the details," Karkat suggests. You don't know how you keep forgetting he's there. "Let them keep, like, the vague shit." Wait, that's not Karkat's speech patterns. That's Dave. Huh. "Hell, don't take anything, just blur it a lil' bit—" 

**Who's the psychic here again?** Kurloz glances back over his shoulder to bare his teeth at Karkat for a second, then turns his attention back to you. **Can I? Won't hurt you, lil' sib.**

You shouldn't. You should keep the memory. 

**Nothing to gain from that shit.**

He's right. You don't believe he's right, but you trust him (and that'd be baffling if you didn't know him) and you don't know if you can handle adding the clear memory of harnessing your powers to kill another person. 

"Yeah," you tell him, somehow getting _that_ out without hesitating (two in one day, wow) and closing your eyes as his hands shift to rest on your temples again.

Even with your eyes closed, you see bright purple as Kurloz's power floods your mind. He does what he's said he'll do, you know that even as he finishes off the job by sending you to sleep that you don't want but you know that you need.


End file.
